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| cute as a baby goose: Ryan, er, Gosling |
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As my mind drifted from the Slot A into Slot B story I wondered if Clooney is anything more than a competent director. He has a decent visual eye but he does not stir strong performances from his cast: Ryan Gosling has a one note smirk throughout, Marisa Tomei's scenes made me wince for her and asking Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman to play schlubby is like asking Robin Williams to "give us one more take completely over the top."
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I wonder too about the logic. Does an intelligent young woman wrestling with the decision to have an abortion really want to instigate casual sex with her good looking boss? And not once but twice? Perhaps insane women do and as further proof that all women in this man's world are either dupes or mad the young intern (SPOILER ALERT) conveniently tops herself. Sheesh, that was lucky, script wise I mean. The internal plotting and logic of this film are dubious and would not have survived the writers room on The West Wing even in its sunset season.
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Before I end this dreary topic I also want to say something about Chris Matthews, Charlie Rose and Rachel Maddow prostituting their journalistic integrity by appearing in a fictional political movie. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I hate this. I like the days when journos wore ties even in war zones and they would sue if someone put them in a TV show or a novel. Now nobody cares. Even Paxo did The Thick Of It. Look, I expect nothing less from Charlie Rose who has always been a slavering celebrity groupie of almost Liptonian proportions but I expected better of Matthews and Maddow. Sure Matthews has a man crush on handsome Irish charmers (his new JFK hagiography is one aspect of that) but occasionally in interviews he'll remember that he's supposed to be a journalist. And Maddow I don't get at all. Presumably she's immune to Clooney's baritone and that thing he does where he looks up at you from his own shoes. What happened to the pair of them? Is the fairy gold from Hollywood really that bewitching?
56 comments:
I did like Gosling in that movie where he played a teacher. But he really tried to provoke me by walking around my neighbourhood with Rachel McAdams. For that he will one day pay
Tom Cruise provoked me by making Nicole Kidman greet people and help conduct interviews at the International Scientology Centre in London, but not, crucially, on the day I showed up to save her.
Gosling was great in Lars and the Real Girl. Unfortunately, he is now a movie star, so he probably won't get a chance at a part like that again. The upside is that he will make a lot of money.
My sister saw him interviewed somewhere recently, and had a rather sweet story about him to tell at Thanksgiving. Apparently he was one of those guys who was homeschooled by his mom and had a couple of older sisters.Unlike those who take the more logical path and start writing crime fiction, he grew up learning ballet and still goes to a dance studio in L.A. and practices with a bunch of grade schoolers.
Why does he practice with grade schoolers? Because he is absolutely TERRIBLE at it.
The kids will no doubt keep him from hubris, which is more than can be said for George Clooney.
Seana
He does ballet classes with grade schoolers?
Far far away I hear an alarm bell ringing.
I never even saw Good Night, and Good Luck because I just assumed the whole point of that movie was probably McCarthyism Was Not a Good Thing. Did anyone here see it, and was it worthwhile?
I never understood why shows like Charlie Rose and Inside the Actors' Studio existed. I didn't really understand The Conversation, but it sure held my attention and scared the life out of me. I wish Gene Hackman still made movies. I love Giamatti and would hate to see him typecast.
Anon
Dont get me wrong, Giamatti is good. He's always good. But this is not exactly a stretch for him and a more interesting director would have seen that. Getting Giamatti for this role was playing it safe.
I thought Goodnight wasn't bad actually. Better than this and some subtle performances.
I thought many of the same things about this film. The main thing for me was the story wasn't good enough. I was thinking during the very slow start that they were pacing themselves for a weighty political thriller full of suspense and intrigue, but nope it never came. Also I chose to watch it on a friday night with a few G&T's, I was pretty glum. My friend and I laughed at the Intern girl saying to Gosling, "I've been wanting to f**k you for ages". Yeah its that easy for men. Maybe Clooney has heard that a few times and thinks its the same for all men.
I hope Giamatti and Hoffman keep getting good roles instead of paying a price for being Regular-looking People.
I heard Reds was a good film so maybe I shouldn't call George the New Improved Warren Beatty. Their politics are fine by me, but if ever a movie insulted its audience it was Bulworth. It certainly insulted Halle Berry.
Have you ever heard Gosling talk about performing as a kid with his Elvis-impersonator uncle in Cornwall, Ontario? It may be funnier if you've ever been to Cornwall, which isn't exactly a tourist destination...
So, the promise of "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" still hasn't been lived up to, has it? Too bad.
Adrian
Thanks for saving Nicole Kidman so she could gift us with so much cinematic crap.
I think most-not all-movies today are trading on the public image the players radiate. So Matthews and Maddow add a little bit of that "insider" giggle. I am always late to movies, and I just saw "The American." This really was a Clooney indulgence, and I was very disappointed. The story was predictable, he wasn't very good, but the scenery was beautiful. I saw "Good NIght and Good lUck" and really liked it. That seemed to be well done, and a labor of love. But maybe i liked it for the nostalgia because I'm old enough to remember the real thing :)
You are right in so many ways and it does pain me to agree...it seems the apparatchiks are just churning out the same crap but giving it a different smell...
'gee let's make a movie cloaked in political intrigue'. Again.
I mean how many different lenses can one look through at political chicanery??
Whew..i feel better now. Look, Clooney has done some good stuff and Good Night did it for me, and so has Gosling (I did like Drive but then I am a Sallis nut), but it appears that Hollywood has captured these two and watered down further their good qualities with this Ides claptrap.
When I start checking my email during movies, generally it means..well you know...
The Elvis uncle explains a lot, John. Perhaps too much.
Also, I don't think someone who wants to be a hobbit extra, despite various rants against Peter Jackson, should be dissing Rachel Maddow in precisely this way.
Frankie
That line was terrible and since Clooney wrote the script I reckon you're right, he's heard it a lot and thinks its the way people speak. The more famous a creative type becomes the more cut off they become too.
Anon
Warren Beatty's 10 years of silence is very peculiar. But its better that than doing 3 or 4 horrible films every year.
John
Well having an Elvis impersonator uncle gets you huge bonus points in my book. Maybe I'm prejudiced but any kind of Elvis/Elvis impersonator connection is a good thing for me.
Matthews, Rose, and Maddow are whores. Didn't journalists stop doing this after the uproar when, I think, Max Robinson and a bunch of ABC guys appeared in some movie?
Oh, but wait. I said "journalists"; Matthews et al. are on television. There's a difference.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Anon
Alas I was unable to save Nicole which is why we got stuff like Dogville and Australia.
Lil
I hated The American. I thought it clubbed us over the head with its own stupidity.
In fact I blogged about it here:
http://adrianmckinty.blogspot.com/2010/11/not-very-bright-american.html
Dan
I think you cant blame Gosling for the roles he's been in. He's still starting out and couldnt pass up the chance of working with Clooney et al but you can blame Clooney for playing dumb for us.
Seana
I like Maddow. She's a bloody Rhodes Scholar so why does she feel the need to do this?
Peter
Whores is a strong word. I dont think Matthews and Maddow are but I think its a fair description of Charlie Rose. The man is shameless. In fact I think its a bit unfair on whores to compare them with a creep like Rose.
No reason to dislike Maddow any more than you dislike any other entertainer.
Peter
Yeah I take your point.
There's no damned difference between entertainment anything else if it's on television. That's no original idea, but it's scary nonetheless.
Peter
But there used to be. When Walter Cronkite was telling us about JFK or the Moon Landing or Vietnam or Watergate we believed him because we knew he was a serious journalist. I cant think of anyone like that now. Even the BBC war reporters go on chat shows to "show their lighter side."
Funny you should mention Walter Cronkite. He's the model everyone holds up when anyone defends the possibility that television once offered journalism. But when he died, and all the news shows were full of clips of his work, I noticed one interview during which the camera would constantly cut away to close-ups of Cronkite looking concerned.
Possibly these close-ups were even shot at the time of the interview. But I thought that by God, even then television was tendentiously manipulating reality.
For years, though, despite my entirely justified feeling toward my own industry, the one thing that has made me feel good about newspapers is watching American television news -- any American television news, cable, local -- for five minutes.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
The only frustrating thing for me reading this discussion is that people may once have thought Maddow any different from the rest of them. It's something like the cultists who think that Steve Jobs was anything other than a brilliant businessman who wanted to make a lot of money and did.
Nothing wrong with Maddow or Jobs, but they are a television entertainer and an arch-capitalist respectively, and nothing else. People should not forget that.
Whoa, maybe it's the company you keep, and then you are very fortunate. Maddow and Jobs are examples what happens when very bright people also have the sales genes. Why should stardom and capitalism be limited to greedy, snarky overgrown adolescents? Or people like Romney, who claims to represent the private sector, or pretty much anyone on the Fox network who doesn't know Africa from any other group of countries? Just to keep it on topic, the movies today are made for those folks, y'know? And they vote.
That's what I meant. they're salesmen who are (or were) good at what they do. I'm typing this on an Apple computer. It's a fine product, but Steve Jobs was not comparable, as his Apple co-founder said after Jobs died, to Martin Luther King.
I don't know about Cronkite, but I do think TV news ended when they stopped showing, "In the News withChristopher Glen," on Saturday mornings. He explained Watergate in two minutes and it's still the best explanation I've ever heard.
Peter, no, Jobs wasn't in the same league as Martin Luther King. But I do feel Jobs was somewhat comparable to Gutenberg. It was his idea to make this somewhat mysterious machine available to the ordinary folks. I'm pretty much a technophobe, but I can figure out this machine. It changed the way I buy, how I communicate, and I get to meet some wonderful, interesting people. It's like facebook to some degree. It changed the way we communicate, sell (or denigrate people), and it still goes back to the computer. I think memorials bring out the hyperbole in people.
Maddow isn't just an entertainer, although she can be very entertaining. She is much more informative than Walter Cronkite ever was.
Cameo appearances by famous peopel of all stripes are as old as the hills. You're just mad because because they picked a mediocre vehicle. Maybe it looked better on paper.
Peter and Adrian
Until now I hadn't realized Charlie Rose was a journalist. I swear I'm not being sarcastic! I honestly thought he was just a talk show host who let actors plug their latest limited-release art movies. If he does his own research, or something, would that make him technically a journalist?
Frankie and Adrian
George Clooney writes scripts?! With lines like the one that made you laugh? George seems like a fine person - bright, admirable, sincere - but when my friends and I occasionally discuss guys we'd gladly, you know, schtupp, Clooney's name never comes up. Christian Bale, sure; Colin Farrell, maybe; the young Harry Belafonte, the elderly Harry Belafonte, Christopher Hitchens, any number of soccer players - but Clooney? Never rates a mention.
Kate, he's not my type either, but let's just say that Clooney is not hurting for rabid female admirers. I used to read the blog of an agent, for instance, who was as tough as nails as agents come, but to hear her tell it, in George Clooney's hands she would have been mere putty.
And now, on to watching that hypocritical sellout we've been speaking of at length above.
Seana
Well, I guess it takes all kinds to make a world, like my grandma used to say.
"State & Main", two guys are sitting at a booth in a diner.
Guy 1: Well, it takes all kinds to make the world.
Guy 2 (sarcastically): Oh, is that what it takes? I always wondered.
Very apt, anon.
As far as I can tell, it only takes two. Those who like and those who don't like George Clooney.
Anonymous
I'm anonymous; are you anonymous, too?
Peter
I know I've been dissed on here for banging on about Neil Postman but I'll say it again: Amusing Ourselvess To Death is prophetic.
John
For me its when the BBC reporters in the field stopped wearing jackets and ties.
Lil
Whenever I see the shiny and the new I think of every episode of Columbo where the gadget freak rich guy is taken down by the guy in the shabby coat driving a 40 year old Volvo. That always warms the cockles of my heart.
Kate
I too am immune to Clooney's charms. One thing I like about the young women of Hollywood is the fact that so many of them went to university. Clooney, Bale, Cruise etc. never felt the need to go.
Seana
Just because the cameos are venerable doesnt make them ok. The trouble is that everyone wants tobe Jon Stewart these days not Edward R Murrow. They named high schools after Murrow they wont name any after Stewart.
Anon
I like.
Anon
It may be another Anon or you may have taken an Ambien.
Just because it's venerable doesn't make it unokay either.
I'll just say it one more time. Rachel Maddow is not Jon Stewart. Even Jon Stewart has said so.
"hey named high schools after Murrow they wont name any after Stewart. "
In Hollywood they might. After Clooney, too. The schools will compete in the same sports leagues as the Ariana Huffington Charter School.
Adrian
Shia LaBoueff said he wouldn't bother with drama school or university because he was working with Steven Spielberg and that was far more educational. That doesn't bode well for the next crop of leading guys.
I guess Tom Hanks never had much formal schooling but it looks like he took the time to educate himself.
Adrian
I hope maybe some of Hollywood's young collegiate women are studying writing and directing so they can create more and varied roles for other actresses. Although it would also be great if they studied photography or cinematography to create beautiful movies that didn't necessarily cost a fortune to make.
For more influence in Hollywood people need to get MBAs, study accounting and marketing and get law degrees. Writers and directors get hired, you need to influence the hiring.
John
Oops - sorry! I really thought the artists had the power. Do independent movie-makers have the same problems?
Adrian...in the cold light of a Saturday morning I can see your point about Gosling. He's still a young pup and I figure at that stage in your career you can't be too fussy about the roles you choose to inhabit....
As far as I know John Sayles is the only independent filmmaker left.
Indie is just another genre like romantic comedy or horror.
John, I'm half-surprised no one has tried to copyright the word "indie." Or maybe someone has.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
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